Community Acupuncture:
Simple, safe, effective health care
What is Acupuncture?
Acupuncture involves placing tiny needles under the skin at specific points in order to stimulate the body’s ability to heal itself. Acupuncture is a very safe form of medicine. Because it depends on the body’s ability to heal itself, acupuncture cannot make a problem worse. Acupuncture is so ancient that no one knows for sure where or how it originated. Nor does acupuncture fit well into any biomedical paradigm. Acupuncture has been practiced for so long in so many places that there are an almost infinite variety of ways to do it. The most important thing about acupuncture is not why it works, but how amazingly well it works.
What We Treat
Acupuncture is effective for an enormously wide range of conditions, so wide that it is likely that it will help almost any problem to some degree, even if it can’t cure it entirely. People use acupuncture to manage the daily stress of modern life; to ease aches, pains, and strains; to fend off colds, flus, and allergies; to sleep more restfully; to cope with chronic health conditions; to regulate hormonal cycles; to get support in making healthy changes; to recover from injuries and surgery; to reduce joint and muscle inflammation; to improve digestion; to feel more like themselves again. Besides being effective for a lot of different specific conditions acupuncture is beneficial in some general ways for everyone: it usually improves sleep, energy, and mood.
Here is a list of conditions the World Health Organization has deemed appropriate for treatment with acupuncture. (skip down to page 23 of this 1979 report)
Why Community Acupuncture?
Seminole Heights Community Acupuncture is one of over 200 community acupuncture clinics that have opened across the country. Our goal is to provide care to as many people as we can. The care we provide is top-notch and we offer authentic, traditional acupuncture. We believe acupuncture doesn’t have to be expensive to work. In fact, we think affordability is essential to good care. Acupuncture is a process and works best when people are able to commit to a course of several treatments. Because of the lower fees and sliding scale that community acupuncturists charge, our clients are more able to make this commitment to their healing. Affordability, community and individualized care are what distinguish community acupuncture from other types of care.
Affordability & sliding scale
We offer acupuncture on a low-fee sliding scale. Acupuncturists in other settings see only one patient at a time and charge $65 to $175 per treatment. And for their patients it’s because of its cost, patients make the hard decision to stop coming in as often as they need to get well. In a community setting like ours, several people are treated at the same time so costs can be lowered. And we leave it up to our patients to decide what they can afford. No proof of income is ever requested.
Community Treatments
At our clinic here in Tampa we use recliners, clustered in groups in an open, quiet, soothing space. Treating patients in a community setting has many benefits: it’s easy for friends and family members to come in for treatment together; many patients find it comforting; and a collective environment is established by the group treatments making each individual’s treatments more powerful. We take acupuncture back to its roots and treat patients in a setting similar to how acupuncture is traditionally done in Asia.
Treatment length times can vary
Community style acupuncture allows patients to keep their needles in as long as they want. Most people learn after a few treatments when they feel “done”; this can take from twenty minutes to an hour! Many people fall asleep, and wake feeling refreshed. This way of practicing takes the emphasis of healing off of the practitioner and places it on our body’s abilities to heal itself once needles are placed and a person is allowed to relax in stillness and quiet.
Watch The Documentary…”The Calmest Revolution”
Our video tells the story of the community acupuncture movement and how a small group of loud-mouthed, over-educated, under-employed activists and a massive group of regular people with average incomes revolutionized healthcare services by using large empty rooms, old recliner chairs, and two-cent needles. Sit back & watch
Gururas Khalsa, AP, DOM
Gururas Khalsa has practiced and taught acupuncture & Chinese medicine since 2002. Gururas specializes in pain related conditions as well as women’s health. She trained to be a direct-entry midwife focusing on out-of-hospital births and has assisted midwives at births in both birth centers and at home. Gururas teaches Kundalini Yoga and meditation. More about Gururas.
